


a way to call him back, a way to hold him home

by Eldestmiddle



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire, Derek is fixated, Kate is thwarted by Stiles, M/M, Peter is pushy and interested, Stiles is raised by wolves, feral!Stiles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-13
Updated: 2013-02-13
Packaged: 2017-11-29 04:43:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/682911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eldestmiddle/pseuds/Eldestmiddle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles is a feral child and the hunters are baffled</p>
            </blockquote>





	a way to call him back, a way to hold him home

**Author's Note:**

> Not intended to be super-realistic

When Derek was twelve, a scrawny, pale boy was dropped off at the Hale house by some hunters. They had been completely baffled and extremely apologetic.

“We thought he was a werewolf,” one said, “He’d been running around the outskirts of Ephraim and stealing shit. Y’know. Reports of a naked guy running around with a pack of wolves?”

The Hales hadn’t heard.

“Well, we found him sniffing about our jeep one day so Daryl took a potshot at him and… well.”

They all turned to look at the still slightly snarling figure swathed in bandages. He had wrestled off his pants while they had been talking and was licking his thigh and worrying the wraps. A hunter, probably Daryl, winced.

“Look,” maybe Daryl said reasonably, “he’s definitely a feral child, and he’s much more adjusted to wolves than humans so we thought a werewolf pack would be better to help him blend into society as much he can.” Also, hunters usually weren’t very stable nor in a good way to help provide for any child’s needs. They usually had problems with the law as well.

Meredith Hale thought it over a moment before agreeing to take in the child. The hunters expressed gratitude, and before they left, one paused to give warning, “Be careful, all of you, for anyone named Argent. Their youngest just joined the ranks and she’s trigger happy to make a name.” And it was a good warning, more than worth taking in a child wild and uncaring. A new hunter was as dangerous as a rogue, even from the families, and it was worse because the other hunters would excuse them for a year or five by saying, “They’re new. We remember what it was like.” And they would go and lock themselves up for a drink because they _did_ remember what it was like and it shamed them.

The first thing the Hales did with the boy was establish hierarchy. It was important that he was defined in the chain of command. He dominated surprisingly over some cousins and went toe to toe with Laura who was fourteen and slated to be next alpha. He gazed Derek in the eye and didn’t push but didn’t give either, and that made some aunts and uncles look at Derek with speculation. Perhaps he was more than  Laura’s youngest brother.

Later, Uncle Peter said to Derek, “I think he used to be pack Alpha.”

The Hales tried to treat him like a lost wolf who had been away from pack too long. It was difficult because they didn’t have his name. There was no way to call him back. It was difficult because they were not his blood. There was no mother to hold him home. Instead, he roamed the woods of Beacon Hills and only answered to the Hale Alpha’s howl and that didn’t help at all.

Derek was fascinated by this wolf boy. There was no way to be sure of the boy’s age. Any baby fat had been worn away by harsh living, and his body was sinewy and pale with little moles. He was primarily nocturnal and had a hard time, at first, adjusting to daytime living. He was not a werewolf, he did not have any superior senses, but he managed to get Cousin Josh on his back with his throat bared like it was nothing.

“Clever,” said Uncle Peter, “clever.”

However, the boy seemed to have no interest in Derek after the initial meeting, and Derek couldn’t think of a way to approach the boy without ending up like Cousin Josh.

It was to their complete astonishment that a month after his arrival, the boy said, “I’m Stiles.”

The intonation wasn’t quite right, but it was clear and had the entire pack turning to stare at him. The boy-Stiles was crouching on a chair and had just finished scarfing a plate of curly fries that he had run Cousin Josh away from. The Alpha had allowed it because it was hard enough trying to get him to eat inside.

As they all stared at him, Stile said, once more, “I’m Stiles,” and resumed licking his plate.

After that, he would make short sentences throughout the day.

“I like your hair,” he told Laura.

“Now eat?” he asked Meredith.

“Go away,” he told Peter.

“You’re douchenozzle,” he told Cousin Josh.

Peter was very excited. “He’s teaching himself how to talk again,” he told Derek. “He was obviously part of society before going feral and forgetting. He wants to know what we’re saying so he’s listening to us.” And then Peter went and rented 360 dollars worth of DVDs to show Stiles.

Stiles was ecstatic.

An upside to the DVDs were that he finally started wearing clothes. The downside was that he would not stop talking. Peter seemed to be the only one pleased with this because Stiles would make irreverent remarks about things that even _werewolves_ didn’t want to address at the worst times of the day.

“Mount boy well?” he asked Aunt Patty.

“You left bloodstain,” he told Laura, “on skirt.”

“Show me more,” he told Peter.

“You’re a douchenozzle,” he told Cousin Josh.

After the Sparta fiasco, everyone started censoring Peter’s DVD choices. It was quiet for a while until Derek found Stiles in his room, flipping through the dictionary with Peter. After that, there were little flash cards stuck to everything and Stile would laboriously flip through the dictionary to read each exact definition with Peter peeking over his shoulder.

“When did he even learn to read?” Derek asked Peter.

“I taught him when he wanted to know what the opening credits were.” Peter told Derek. Peter suddenly looked very serious. “He’s a genius, Derek. So incredibly bright and determined, so clever.”

This was proved when Stiles walked proudly into the house with a Walgreens bag and handed it over to Peter. He had gone out alone and bought two packs of gum, a natural moisturizer, and eyeshadow with the money Peter had given him.

It had been two years since Stiles had been brought to them by the hunters.

Stiles still tended toward solitude. His new speaking habit didn’t mean he stopped running through the woods alone. It just meant that he filled the scant moments with the pack with so many words, it seemed to overflow into the Stiles-shaped silence when he wasn’t there. He still had a tendency to crouch rather than sit and moved strangely, languidly on all fours most of the time. The only person he had regular contact with was Peter. Derek felt jealous of that at times. He wanted to know the things about Stiles that Peter did. Peter informed him that Stile had not been Alpha of the wolf pack he had been in and hinted that he knew how Stiles had been left with the wolves. Derek found himself skulking around Peter a lot more after that, but that only succeeded in driving Stiles away to the woods more. Peter would raise an eyebrow sardonically at him after Stiles had fled and say, “Really, Derek.”

It was around that time that Derek noticed an older woman hanging around the school. She would stand by the pool fence and watch him do laps in the pool. If he looked over at her, she’d wink and blow him a kiss. It was kind of hot. He’d flex a bit as he climbed out the pool and watch her smirk. He’d think about her, sometimes, in bed.

Then he met her on the family property.

Derek had been sent to find Stiles and bring him home for dinner. He managed to find Stiles’ shirt and silently groaned at the thought of the police being called about a shirtless or possibly naked boy running around the woods in March. When he finally saw Stiles, he saw him with the older woman who had been eyeing him at school. She was watching him examine something in his hand. As Derek drew closer, he saw Stiles lick at it, almost questioningly.

“Stiles!”

Stiles looked up, unconcerned, but the woman jumped a bit before recovering and smirking at him. Derek didn’t miss how her heart stayed fast with fear despite her tossing her hair back and leaning onto one hip.

“Hey, cutie.”

Derek ignored her to look at Stiles’ hand. He was holding a blue-violet flower with curled edges. Derek felt his heart thump hard. It was wolfsbane. He pulled Stiles away from the woman. “Don’t just hand him things,” he snapped. “He doesn’t know any better.”

“Sorry, sorry,” she laughed. “Look, I just wanted to say hey when I saw him running around like that.”

She smiled at him but he didn’t let up an inch. After a few moments, she sighed, “Look, this isn’t the best first meeting, but could we start over?” She peeked coyly at him, “I’m Kate Argent.”

“We’re leaving.”

As Derek marched Stiles away, he heard her huff, but he didn’t care. Argent, Kate Argent. The new hunter, the eager one looking to make her name. Derek wouldn’t have remembered except the hunter that brought Stiles had mentioned her and Derek always remembered everything about Stiles. And the wolfsbane flower was a dead giveaway.

Stiles suddenly planted his feet firmly to the ground and jerked Derek to a stop. Derek took a quick glance to see that they were far out of Argent’s eyesight before snapping at Stiles, “ _What?”_

Stiles kissed him and Derek felt his lips blister and blacken. Stiles pulled back and eyed him solemnly.

“She’s hungry. I think she want eat us.”

Then Stiles licked at his lips until the traces of wolfsbane were gone and his lips had healed. Derek felt his face burn not unlike how the wolfsbane had burned his mouth.

\------

Derek presented Stiles’ wolfsbane flower at dinner and explained how Argent had been hanging around the school. Meredith quietly got on the phone with the principal and explained how there had been an adult woman watching her son’s swim practices. Derek studiously avoided looking at Argent after that and when she approached him after swim practice, the coach, who had been informed by the principal, got campus security to escort her out. When she persisted in watching him, the police were called. They put a trespassing mark on her record with a note for her obsession with younger boys. And then she was pretty much run out of town after that.

This incident made the Hales more aware that while Stiles had only rarely left the house and woods to go to the pharmacy and brush up on situational vocabulary and buy eyeshadow, he couldn’t really stay in the Hale house forever. He had to go to school eventually and get an education. He had to learn to keep the Hale secret. This made them understandably nervous. Stiles was chatty nowadays and who knew if he could even understand the need for secrecy? He was raised, quite literally, by wolves. For all the Hales knew, he might consider them quite normal.

Meredith called a family meeting and, after wrestling Stiles into a chair, tried to explain how some things must be kept secret. And how there were family secrets that were kept in the family away from outsiders. Like how the family turned into wolves on the full moon. And this must be kept secret. Because people might get hurt. The entire pack watched nervously as Stiles listened intently to Meredith’s warnings. Stiles wasn’t the type to blindly obey an order and ‘ _don’t talk about the family’_ was far too open to interpretation by an imaginative young man. He was forever asking ‘ _why’_ and _’because_ ’ would not satisfy him.

Stiles thought this over very carefully before he shrugged and said, “I know.” Then, in the bemused silence that followed, “This is like when Marisa could not know about Tony’s baby with Joni because although the baby would not necessarily threaten Marisa’s relationship with her fiancé, the possibility of the threat to her happiness would cause an immense breakdown in her frontal lobe and disasters would ensue. And that is exactly what happened when Valerie informed Marisa of the fetus.” He carefully looked around at the gaping jaws. “I will not be Valerie. Your secret is safe with me.”

“Oh my god,” Laura wheezed. She looked as though she was trying to decide whether she wanted to cry or not. “Oh my god, you just referenced _Passions of the Body, Storms of the Heart_.”

Meredith slowly pressed her face into her hand and rubbed between her eyebrows. “Peter,” she gritted out, “this is all your fault.”

It had been four years since Stiles had come into their pack.

“How can he speak like that?” Derek asked Peter.

Peter grinned as he downloaded more TV series from iTunes. “He’s amazingly bright. I’m thinking of introducing him to the internet soon.”

Laura, who had been passing by on her way outside, heard Peter and groaned loudly enough to make Stiles look up from _Spirited Away_.

“Jesus Christ, Uncle Peter.”

 ------

The Hales are lured into a false sense of security by Stiles’ apparent genius and quick adaption. He wore clothes, he surfed the internet, he spoke no worse than anyone else in the pack, he walked upright, he comprehended the nature of their secret, and he understood the basics of societal interaction well enough to buy makeup from the pharmacy.

Unfortunately, school was very much like a wolf pack.

So when Jackson Whittemore shoved Stiles in the lunch courtyard, Stiles immediately went for Whittemore’s throat.

Derek heard it happening but he was trapped three blocks away at the high school in history class. He sat by the window and listened helplessly to Stiles’ snarls and Whittemore’s yelps as a movie played on the overhead.

After the school rang out, he immediately ran to the middle school and found Stiles and Whittemore in the office, slouched on opposite ends.

Stiles had more obvious bruises indicative of punches on his face but Derek bet Whittemore hurt more. Whittemore sported marks on his neck and jawline that clearly show that Stiles made a fairly solid play for the blond’s jugular with his flat omnivorous teeth, and Derek also knew that growing up as Stiles did made him deceptively thin and desperately strong while he used momentum to throw opponents painfully around and grapple them into submission i.e. Cousin Josh. If Whittemore wasn’t speckled as a pinto under his designer wear, Derek would eat Ashleigh’s tutu.

Derek went to sit beside Stiles, who ignored him, and glared at Whittemore, who cringed away. He carefully listened to the sounds in the principal’s office.

Peter had taken on papers declaring him Stiles’ guardian before he could be enrolled in school. As Stiles had refused to be removed from the land around the Hale house, Peter had basically abandoned his apartment within a week of Stiles’ arrival with the hunters and moved into the Hale house. No one could say that Peter was not the one to do most in acclimating Stiles to humanity so when he showed up with papers as Stiles being a neglected victim of the foster care system and Peter as his new foster parent, no one in the family objected though all privately thought about how frightening it was that Peter could acquire those papers.

Peter was now in the office doing his best to defend Stiles’ actions as being provoked and attributed to the trauma of the system, and Peter’s best is a hungry, terrifying thing. Mrs. Whittemore, as a lawyer, was attacking Stiles as vicious and a danger to the students while trying to gloss over the fact that her son had been the one to make first physical contact as her husband nodded and uh-huh’ed beside her. The poor principal had not been allowed to make a sound since Derek started listening.

 


End file.
